


green these mountains and these valleys

by Vaznetti



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: AU: Shuri as queen of Wakanda, AU: Shuri was never Snapped, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loyalty, M'Baku is loyal, Shuri is grieving, Survivor Guilt, insincere marriage proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26301244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaznetti/pseuds/Vaznetti
Summary: After the Snap, Shuri becomes Queen of Wakanda; with M'Baku's help, she must balance her grief against her duty.
Relationships: M'Baku & Shuri (Marvel)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 46
Collections: Alternate Universe Exchange 2020





	green these mountains and these valleys

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frozensea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frozensea/gifts).



> The MCD tag is here not because anyone dies in the story, but because as far as Shuri and the other characters are concerned, T'Challa and all the other people who were Snapped are really dead. Title from W. H. Auden.

There was no one else: her mother told her that, and Okoye as well. Half Wakanda was gone -- half the world, but Shuri couldn't bring herself to care about that. More than half Wakanda, in fact. The dead from the battle had left their bodies to be buried by the few survivors; her mother led the mourning for them all. "But you will be queen," Ramonda said, and not for the first time. "There's no one else, and Wakanda needs you."

There was someone else, Shuri realised, looking up from a piece of twisted alien metal at the stars through the broken windows of her lab. She went to wake Okoye; there weren't enough of of the Dora Milaje left to guard her, but if she left on her own Okoye would just hunt her down and bring her back. But like this she could give Okoye an order, even if doing it twisted something inside her, and make her come too.

The last time she had taken the road into the mountains... the last time she had believed that her brother was dead, and then he had come back. And now he would again, she thought, there was no body, just like last time, he would come back, just like last time. And here they were, just like last time, standing before M'Baku in the hall of the Jabari. He was different: thinner, with a burn on his face and a grey cast to his skin. None of them had slept much, since the battle. And this time, T'Challa wasn't lying hidden here, half-dead but also half alive.

"In a week's time," Shuri said, "I will be brought before the tribal elders, and I will take the throne." Her voice didn't shake much. "Unless you challenge me for it." Next to her, Okoye shifted her weight.

M'Baku sat down, not on his throne but on the step before it, and rubbed a hand over his eyes. "I'm not going to challenge you, little girl."

Shuri paused, her arguments suddenly out if order. "You're not?"

He bared his teeth in a sort of grin. "Surprised, little girl?"

"Stop calling me that," Shuri said. "I'm not a little girl."

"What would you do if I did challenge you, little girl?"

"I would tell you again, I am not a little girl. Wakanda needs peace now, not division. I would have asked you instead to be my consort." She paused. "Only in public, though. Not, you know, that."

He stared at her, and threw his head back and laughed. Really laughed, like she hadn't heard since the battle. Maybe since before the battle. "Your consort?" he gasped. "Come back when you have some meet on your bones, little girl."

She raised her chin. "It would be traditional," she said, "and right now we need tradition." She had seen that much in the empty faces of her people, the ones who had nothing but ashes left to mourn, and broken houses and empty fields. They needed something, anyway, and as much as she hated her country's stupid traditions she understood intellectually why they mattered. That was why she would go to the elders and take the herb, why she would give orders to the Dora Milaje and the tribal elders and even the damned Jabari up in their mountains. "I thought you cared about that stuff!"

He had stopped laughing. "We haven't just lost half our people. Half the animals in the mountains are gone, half the trees. Didn't you see it? The Jabari are orphans now; they need me more than Wakanda does. Go have your vision and take your crown. Be the Black Panther, if you can. Leave the Jabari alone. We're done with you." He turned his back on them and left them in the empty hall.

"Your consort?" Okoye asked. "Seriously?"

"Shut up," Shuri said. "I thought he was going to... It doesn't matter. Let's go."

\---

There was not much singing at her coronation. Not much dancing. Not much fighting, either. M'Baku did not come. Shuri couldn't remember the name of the new leader of the Water Tribe. Her mother didn't smile, not really. She had shouted at Shuri about her visit to the Jabari: it seemed so unfair, since her mother had always been trying to get her to pay more attention to tradition, but when she tried to use it for her own ends, somehow that was wrong. But Shuri had shouted back, and now she would become Queen instead of her mother, and she didn't know how to apologize for any of it.

That night she went to the cavern and lay down as the sand was poured around her head, over her face. When she stood up she was somewhere else: the empty battlefield stretched around her, three burned trees the only things still standing. The ground was burned where the bodies fell, the sky still reflecting orange from the flames that had died. There wasn't anything else to do, so she headed for the trees. Where she walked, the grass started to grow long around her legs, whispering to her as she passed through it; she didn't stop to listen. A lioness at the base of the trees slinked away as she came near; she felt a thrill of fear, maybe the first thing she'd felt since the battle, but reminded herself it wasn't real. 

The panther lay on one of the branches, staring down at her. "T'Challa," she said, taking a deep breath that threatened to become a sob. "T'Challa, I can't do it. I need you. I need you to come back again."

The great cat shifted, and then a man was standing in front of her, arms wrapped around her shaking shoulders. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I don't know how to save you."

"You have nothing to be sorry for," her father said.

She stared up. "Baba?" she said. 

He smiled. "My beautiful, brilliant daughter." She hugged him harder, and he stroked her head. "You will do it. You will be a magnificent queen for Wakanda."

"I should never have been queen. T'Challa was our king, he was the Black Panther. Not me. I don't know what to do. I miss him so much, I miss you both so much."

"You are not a little girl any more, Shuri."

"I am," she said. "I might as well be. I don't know what I'm doing. How can I help our people heal? Look, the destruction has reached you too."

"You will do it because you must," her father said.

"It should be T'Challa." She wiped her eyes. "Can I see him, too?"

T'Chaka was silent a moment. "Your brother isn't here. He hasn't joined his ancestors."

Her stomach fell. "What does that mean? Isn't he dead? Or is he something worse than dead? Where is he?"

She reached for her father again, as if she could shake the knowledge out of him, but her hands were full of sand, and her mouth and eyes; she struggled to sit up in the pit, grabbed at a pair of hands, unsteady. "Where is T'Challa?" she asked, but of course they had no answer.

"You saw your brother?" one of them asked.

"He wasn't there," she said. "He is lost." She pulled herself to her feet in the sand. "I am going to _destroy_ Thanos."

\---

Most of the alien items her people brought her were ugly. They were meant for killing, as cheaply and efficiently as possible. Some of the wreckage was beautiful in its own twisted way, but still, it was only wreckage. There was nothing to tell her how to defeat Thanos and bring back their dead. For that she needed the Infinity Stones, and those, Okoye told her, had been destroyed. She spent days with what was left of Vision. The stone that made him live was gone but she searched for any subatomic trace it might have left in his body: if she couldn't find the Infinity Stones, perhaps she could replicate them. Okoye brought her plates of food and news of the outside world. Shuri ignored both. She had spent days and weeks on this, and still, nothing.

Thanos' invasion had left behind the ships which had crashed outside their city. She ordered one brought to her lab, and then another: they could be taken apart, their energy sources analyzed and perhaps replicated. Maybe she could take the fight to them. Her mother came to the lab, picking her way around the machinery, with some report from the Border Tribe about their animals. Shuri ignored her, too.

She had crawled halfway into an alien engine -- so inefficient! -- when a booming voice cut into her thoughts. "Where is the queen? I am here to see the Queen of Wakanda."

No one was supposed to disturb her when she was working. Shuri pushed herself out of the machine. "What are you doing here M'Baku?"

"I'm looking for the queen," he said again.

"Here I am." She sat on the top of the engine and watched him.

"So you say. All I see is a little girl." He looked more alive than the last time she had seen him: his eyes were bright and he grinned up at her. But there were still shadows there, and she thought his smile was false: all teeth and no joy.

"What do you mean?"

"When did you last leave this room?" he asked. "When did you see your people? A queen should care about her country. When was the last time you thought about Wakanda?"

"I do nothing but think about Wakanda!" 

"Really?" He walked over to the engine and slapped the casing. "What is this you're working on? Something to help your people?"

"It's the engine of one of their ships," she said. "Once I've rebuilt it I can use it to go into space -- to find the people who did all this to us..."

"And then what?" he said. "Thanos is dead."

"You know?" she asked.

"We Jabari are not so isolated. I read the same reports as you do."

Shuri frowned to herself; she did not always bother to read those same reports. "I need to understand what he did. If I understood how the Infinity Stones worked, then perhaps I could reverse it. I could bring back our dead. I could bring back T'Challa."

M'Baku watched her. "Seven gorillas were born in our mountains this summer. It was a difficult year: there was not enough for the troops to eat, not enough forest for them to keep their distance from each other."

"Yes," she said. "That's what we need to do, to recover what we've lost."

"No," he said. "You're not listening. We need to guard what we have left, watch over it and make sure it prospers: that's what we did in the mountains. Next year will be easier: there will be more food, more space for them."

"Why are you even here, then? Go wait for next year."

"I'm only here now because you came to me before. You told me that Wakanda needs a single ruler. You're that ruler now. So rule."

Her face felt hot. "What do you think I'm doing?"

"I think you're hiding," he said. "Like a frightened little girl."

"Stop calling me that!"

"I will, when you stop acting like one. Come with me."

She folded her arms. "I'm busy."

"I can make you," he said.

"You know you can't," she said.

"Maybe not, but you know you should come. My Queen."

The title seemed to hang in the air between them, mocking her. "Fine," she said, hopping down from the engine. "But only because I want to."

Ayo was waiting outside the laboratory door and trailed after them as they walked out into the city. M'Baku had been right, she hadn't been out of the palace in too long: for a moment she let the sound of the market wash over her, and the smell of the stalls selling food, and the warmth of the sunlight. But then she started to notice the differences: that place she bought earrings from a year ago was empty, and the little coffee bar where she used to meet her friends. There weren't enough people on the streets. M'Baku didn't seem to notice, but then, she thought, he didn't know the city like she did. People paused their conversations as she went past, their eyes following her; she picked up her pace. Ayo must have sent some kind of signal, because at the next crossroad Okoye drove up in a shuttle.

Shuri felt more secure flying, in control of where they went, but from here she could see that there were buildings still damaged from the battle, more of them the closer they came to the edge of the city. Now they were flying over the battlefield, a huge scar of blackened earth, scraps of twisted metal, gaps where something (shrubs, grasses, maybe even houses) used to be. She brought them down next one of the empty spaces: landing on one felt disrespectful, somehow.

"Is this what you wanted me to see?" she asked M'Baku. The sky was bright, a hawk circling above crying out its lonely call. That's why there were no other signs of life, she thought to herself: the hawk has driven all the little animals underground.

"What do you see?" he asked.

"A wound," she said. 

"Are you going to heal it?"

"That's what I've been trying to do!" She kicked at the dusty ground. "I'm trying to undo all this!"

"Not undo it," he said. "Heal it. You can't bring back what is dead."

She turned away from him, from Okoye and Ako watching silently by the shuttle. "I might," she muttered, walking a little distance. Dust swirled around her feet. "Why are there so few grasses," she asked suddenly. "We had rain this season, I know that much."

"Half of everything living was taken, my queen," Okoye said gently. "You know that. Everything: plants, insects, animals. Even the seeds were taken."

"And without insects, fewer plants grow," M'Baku said, "and fewer animals survive."

"So _stupid_ ," Shuri said. She sighed. It was true, there were not enough insects. Not even enough flies, and that was something she would never have imagined. She squatted to watch a beetle crawling on the ground, its copper wings reflecting the sun above her. Copper, she thought, standing so quickly she felt lightheaded. She was going to have to remember to take more time to train with the Dora Milaje. "Insects, you say? I can do something about that, at least." She imagined thousands upon thousands of tiny flying bees, tiny crawling beetles: they would need to be programmed to do the work they needed to do. They would need to be well-made, not like the trash Thanos' army had left behind; something beautiful and strong to bring life, not death. She turned and looked back to the city. "And what is wrong with all of you? Did you see the state of our city? Tomorrow I am calling a meeting: we need a plan for tearing down what can't be repaired, and rebuilding it better." She would need to consult with biologists and soil scientists and architects. She might start, she thought, by talking with M'Baku: it might be worthwhile to consider the world through his eyes. He understood more than she had realized.

"What about today, my queen?" Ako asked.

"Today," she said, walking back to M'Baku. "Today you opened my eyes, a little. Now I will show you Jabari our golden city, and spend some time with my people. Will you come?"

"If my queen wishes," M'Baku said, "I will come."

End.


End file.
